T-shirt E-commerce, Shopify, Website Thingy

[scotty]

I saw on another thread that this got touched on but I can't find it now.

Anyhow. I (with my two boys) are going to set up an online shop/store using Shopify to sell some t-shirts.

Over the years I've built up a pretty big library of t-shirt designs that I've never really done anything with.
Some were made just for the hell of it and others were the homeless designs that were never chosen by some of the t-shirt labels/brands I've worked for.
I thought I may as well make use of them so we've created a brand and we're going get them out there.
Even if it doesn't do much I think my boys could learn a lot from it and have some fun along the way?

I've had a look at setting up a Shopify store on our own www. and it does look 'fairly' simple.

Either get a WP theme and add the Shopify app to create the "Buy" buttons and the checkout.

Other option is that there's a few free pre-built Shopify WP themes with it all built in.

I might be wrong in thinking the second one would be easier.

Thing is, without being very web savvy and a total NOOOOOB to e-comerce I don't want to make any school boy errors at the start, or at all really.

Does anyone have any advice for us that you may think could be useful?

Even silly advice. I like silly advice.

 

[Paul Murray]

I'd probably start off using something like Big Cartel to just get up and running quickly and get some sales coming in. It's a marketplace tailored to clothing and such like, so half the struggle of getting people to visit your store is done for you. You're limited to 5 products on a free plan but this gives you a chance to tweak how you sell, in terms of copy, and knowing which designs are most popular. Every so often change up the store and swap out a couple of designs. Maybe even 'limit' them to a certain period of time. Nothing gets people spending like the thought they might miss out on something (hello Black Friday).

You can always switch out to other platforms in future. The main things to check are your fees, especially with US based stores as you may have to pay for currency conversion, and even some-kind of import tax if you're shipping internationally. Most stores will charge a flat-fee each month, plus a fee per transaction, plus a percentage of the transaction amount, then there's similar fees for payment gateways. Then tax as well. Before you know it your profit has gone.

I'm actually working on solution for setting up e-commerce stores that's sort of a bridge between a Shopify store (without monthly and transaction fees) and a complete solution from a studio. It's not ready yet, but I'm sure I'll need testers in future to give feedback on the experience.

 

[scotty]

Thanks @Paul Murray .

That's deffo food for thought.
I was thinking of having some short runs or even block printing some myself to start with.
I think Big Cartel would work well for that.

The intention was to use a "drop shipping" model eventually as there's very little up front cost/risk and there's no need to invest in stock.
I know they all take a skim but at least to start with, the profit isn't really the first priority.

What you're working on sounds really interesting.
I think there's room in the e-commerce market for new products and platforms.
I'd be interested to know more once you're at Beta.